The impression I got is that Bing would control the presentation layer and search on top of maps but that the “guts” would come from Nokia/Navteq. At the time of the story Microsoft offered the following comment:

Bing Maps has utilized Nokia content for road data, geo-coding and routing services for several years, through Nokia’s Navteq vector data business, relying on the quality of its data for core location services. The Nokia/MS partnership will enable deeper collaboration in the future.

Pocket-lint now reports, following a conversation with Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, that Nokia branding will soon be showing up on Bing Maps for mobile:

[W]e shall soon be seeing the Nokia brand name within other devices and not just the company’s own phones.

“You’ll starting seeing the word ‘Nokia’ on a map that you get from Microsoft properties over a period of time,” Elop explained to Pocket-lint in an interview behind closed doors at CES in Las Vegas. “Even if you are on a BlackBerry device, who recently said they were going to start using Bing Maps.”

Consumers probably won’t care or even notice but OEMs and the various enterprise partners using Bing Maps might. The context in which it might matter (and the example used in the article) is a situation like that of BlackBerry, which adopted Bing as its default mapping platform last year.

RIM obviously competes with Nokia, which will now get branding on its phones. I suppose however, this is no different than Google branding on maps on the iPhone (which Apple will eventually probably replace).

Nokia spent $8 billion to acquire Navteq in October, 2007 and presumably negotiated this branding deal (and all that it implies) with Microsoft as part of their Lumia-Windows Phone relationship. Nokia is also now behind the new Yahoo Maps.

Related Entires

• Bing Maps To Be Powered (Replaced) By Nokia?
• Powered By Nokia, The New Yahoo Maps Goes Live
• Apple Maps Inevitable As Company Acquires 3D Mapper C3
• Google Maps Vs. Bing Maps: Summer Vacation Planning Showdown
• Bing Demos StreetSide With Flickr Photos, Live Video & “Bing Sky”
• Microsoft vs. Google: Street Photography Rigs Compared
• Bing To Become Default Search (And Maps) On RIM BlackBerry Devices
• Bing Maps’ “Game Changer”: Hi-Res Aerial Imagery Coming To Entire US and Western Europe
• Bing Maps Overhauls Interface, Exposes Map Apps To All

The floor plan data has been obtained from all the participating entities, which Google’s Steve Lee says are “very excited” to be a part of the program. Those entities include numerous Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Home Depots and all US IKEA stores. (See the full US list at the bottom.)

Below is a Google-provided screenshot of the Mall of America before interior maps and after:

You’ll Say: “How Did I Live without This?”

The column of numbers in the screen on the right represent floor levels. Google Maps will automatically detect which floor you’re on and show you the appropriate map in a multistory building or location. However you can view maps of different floor levels simply by selecting the desired floor.

Touching the my location indicator will find you on the map — inside the building. Users will be able to see how far they are from bathrooms, escalators and the like. To those who say, “This is nice but unnecessary,” Google’s Lee responds that using the product will win converts. “You’ll say how did I live without this?” he asserts.

Lee told me that at launch Google will have “several hundred million square feet coverage,” but there’s a long way to go before Google delivers all the interior mapping coverage that it would like. To that end there will be a self-service floor-plan upload tool that Google hopes retailers and property owners of all types will use to deliver floor plans for inclusion.

Bing Has “Venue Maps”

Bing has offered similar content online and on Bing Maps for mobile since August. However Bing venue maps don’t dynamically locate you inside buildings or provide floor detection.

Unlike Bing, however, Google is not making the floor plan maps available online at this point. We can assume they will eventually. Interior mapping will be available on Android tablets. And the 3D animations and other capabilities of Google Maps for Android will also be available to the new interior mapping.

One of the biggest accomplishments and useful features is the ability to dynamically locate users within a structure. It will allow them to see how close they are to the nearest bathroom inside Macy’s or how far they are from that better airport restaurant.

Pinpointing Users Inside

Steve Lee told me that Google is essentially using the same techniques (WiFi and cell tower triangulation) to locate people indoors that it uses outside. Outside GPS is also available, but it doesn’t work inside buildings. Google has apparently made some modifications of its approach to render interior location very precisely but it’s not using sensors or any new technology.

During my call with Google I started spinning out various scenarios for these maps going forward: product inventory information, integration with interior photography, ads and deals and so on. Of course Google wouldn’t say anything about any of that. Lee told me that for the time being Google is focusing on simply getting more floor plans into the system.

A Number of Startups Working on Floor Maps

A number of other companies, including Point Inside, Micello and FastMall are also creating interior and mall maps. I asked Google if it was working with any of those companies. Google said no. (They all now become acquisition targets for Google’s competitors.)

Even though these third parties and Microsoft had been working on interior mapping for some time, Google’s entry into the segment will instantly ignite it and make interior mapping a “must have” for companies such as Nokia and even Apple, which has not-so-quietly been building its own mapping capability for the past three years.

Android users will need to update their Google’s Maps apps to get access to the new functionality. There are several videos of the new interior maps in action. We’ll update this post when they become available.

Click here to view the embedded video.

US Launch Partners (full list):

The upgraded Bing app is an interesting hybrid approach as Microsoft seeks to leverage the capabilities of the handset but also make the app work across platforms in a consistent way:

Rather than tightly binding functions into a mobile client, we want to embrace the drive towards exposing our functions via an HTML5 experience.  In order for search to advance, engines need to be able to call functions that are currently ‘hiding’ in apps so we can better help people get done what they are trying to get done. 

Using HTML5, our goal is to build a mobile experience that leverages the unique capabilities of the different platforms including camera support and voice search, while making the functions the apps can provide consistent across the platforms and – in the future – callable by engines to help people get from searching to doing.

The benefit for Microsoft here is that new features and functions can be added on the back end to these native apps without requiring the user to download an entirely new update. Some of the new features include:

• Daily deals (already part of the HTML5 version)
• Video
•  Search with integrated Facebook Likes
• Indoor/venue maps
• An improved version of the “Bing Vision” visual search capability

As someone who uses mobile search often, I am more often than not frustrated at the number of sites in the results that make me do extra work pinching and zooming to get the information I need.

I’m hoping a mobile search engine can come along that will provide a better user experience than Google. And I’m sorry Google, but with the amount of slow-loading, tiny-text, irrelevant-to-my-context desktop sites you present in mobile results, I can’t imagine that such an undertaking would be impossible to do.

Enter Bing. Honestly, I don’t know if Bing has the stuff to take on Google in the mobile search arena, but I applaud them for trying.

I wanted to know more about Bing Mobile and its approach to mobile search, so I asked Bing Mobile and Local Director of Product Management Andy Chu. What follows is his response.

Q. Google is the current mobile search market leader, with what some would say approaches 99% of the mobile search market share. Is that accurate? If it is, why should marketers optimize for and buy media on Bing?

Chu: At Bing, we are focusing on how to help people to make faster, more informed local decisions in order to help them complete tasks, save money and make search more social with their Facebook friends. From a distribution standpoint, Bing is one of the search options on the iPhone and was one of the top 10 free apps in the Appstore in 2010.

Bing is the default search engine for a number of Android, RIM and Brew devices on Verizon, as well as the default search engine on a number of RIM devices from other carriers. With the launch of Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 7.5, Bing is the default search option everywhere Windows Phone ships in the U.S.

Our unique user growth on m.bing.com on Android has grown more than 270 percent — and more than 100 percent on iPhone — over a six-month period ended April 2011. To date, our app activations in the U.S. have exceed more than 22 million.

Furthermore, we know search has evolved beyond simply typing text and navigating to third-party sites via blue links. Input options have expanded to include voice and OCR, and “signals” have expanded to include coordinates, importance, social signals and other factors that help deliver answers and decisions.

These expanded input options help Bing for Mobile better understand user intent, context, location, etc., which in turn allows Bing to provide improved answers, help with decisions and even recommend additional things to do after you’ve completed the immediate task at hand.

We are driving towards a mobile service where Bing will be the must-have mobile companion service that delivers exactly what you need — whether that is a quick answer to a simple fact, or the right tool and guidance to accomplish even a series of complex tasks.

In terms of where marketers should buy media, recent adCenter investments are making more use of mobile signals to drive greater performance for mobile advertising campaigns on Bing. Over the coming months, marketers can expect to see more focus on mobile in adCenter.

Taking each of these investments — the improvements in the Bing mobile experience, distribution across Apple, Android, Windows Phone, mobile investments in adCenter and the greater scale of the Search Alliance — Bing represents a unique, growing audience that mobile marketers can’t reach anywhere else.

Q.  How does Bing plan to distinguish itself in order to gain market share from Google in mobile search?

Chu: Mobile is an important space for Bing, and mobile Internet is ramping faster than the desktop Internet did. The mobile search category has grown 90% year-over-year according to a June 2010 Comscore report. Additionally, global mobile Internet users are expected to exceed the desktop in four years, reaching 1.6 billion users.

To meet the needs of the market, we’re constantly testing and updating our applications and mobile browse experience.

As previously mentioned, Bing is currently one of the search options on the iPhone and the default search engine for a number of Android, RIM and Brew devices, and the default search option for all Windows Phone devices in the U.S.

Q.  Do you recommend creating mobile websites in order to get more qualified traffic from Bing mobile search?

Chu: Yes, we encourage companies to create a mobile-specific site to optimize the small form factor mobile device experience for consumers.

Q.  Why isn’t mobility more of a quality signal in Bing mobile search results? If you’re trying to provide a positive user experience, why not provide results that are device-specific and contextually relevant?

Chu: Mobile search results will vary depending on device capability and the level of integration we can do at the device and app store level.

For example, in Windows Phone 7.5, we integrated app answers as part of search results to help people discover apps more easily and developed a feature called “Local Scout From Bing,” which takes into consideration a person’s location and specific local interests to help them find things like restaurants and activities in their immediate vicinity.

Q.  Do you see a high bounce rate from mobile searchers arriving at desktop content in search results, or do the majority of the searchers take the time to pinch and zoom to find the answers they need?

Chu: Mobile tasks are completed much faster than PCs, with 70 percent of mobile tasks being completed within one hour. On the PC, it can take up to a month.

Q.  What percentage of mobile search has local intent?

Chu: More than 50 percent of mobile queries have local intent, and 46 percent of those queries are info-tainment related.

Q.  Does Bing consider tablets to be mobile devices?

Chu: We’re paying close attention to how consumers use tablets and other advanced devices, as consumer behavior on these devices is evolving quickly. Today, we consider tablets to be part of our multi-platform mobile strategy. We provide both browser- and client-based solutions that are built to work on a variety of mobile devices such as Windows Phones, BlackBerry, Sidekick, the iPhone, Android, and the iPad.

We design our applications and experiences to be optimized for specific devices, whether that’s tablets, iPhones, Androids, etc. For example, we recently launched a feature called Lasso on our Bing for iPad app that was designed with touch-interface in mind and allows people to search with the circle of a finger.

Q.  Should marketers create separate sites that are tablet-optimized?

Chu: Consumers are using tablets at times and places in ways that are different than they use PCs. As marketers look to the audiences they want to reach, they should consider whether or not a tablet-optimized site can deliver the results that they want before making that decision.

Q.  Apps are popular ways of delivering a mobile user experience, but they often aren’t indexed as mobile web sites are, and aren’t able to be returned in mobile search. Google and Yahoo have tried to solve this problem by returning mobile apps for certain queries.

How does Bing plan to provide an accurate view of the best of the mobile user experience when a lot of it isn’t able to be spidered?

Chu: When using our iPhone app or m.bing.com on your iPhone, Bing offers “app search,” which surfaces a list of available iPhone apps that relate to the search, in addition to normal search results. We also offer a build-in app search capability as part of the Bing on Windows Phone 7.5 experience. Neither Apple nor Android devices currently offer built-in app search capability.

Q.   The keyword suggestions in Bing mobile search appear to be actual mobile queries, as they contain queries like mocospace and ringtones that don’t show up in desktop search suggest. Is this accurate?

Chu: Yes, Bing for Mobile automatically surfaces popular searches suggested based on what’s currently hot on Bing for Mobile. We offer the same experience, called “Popular now,” on the PC.

Figure 1. Search suggest on m.bing.com shows popular mobile queries that could be used for mobile-specific keyword research

Q.   I saw Steve Ballmer at SMX West 2010, and he said, “Mobile queries are just gonna keep going up and up and up. I don’t think we’ll see a drop in queries from PCs, but we’ll see a rise in mobile devices queries. Exact numbers are hard to predict. Some queries will feel similar between the two, but there’ll also be a whole new class of queries that are specific to mobile.”

Is this still accurate as we approach 2012? What would be examples of this whole new class of queries that are specific to mobile?

Chu: Yes, we continue to see mobile queries rise across the board (Android, iPhone, RIM, Windows Phone), and we recognize the importance of identifying the signals, context and location of mobile search queries in order to offer the best search experience.

We’re working to expand the search box to take new signals into consideration to help people do, not just find, on the go.

People are using new signals — like Voice and Camera features on their devices — to start searches and complete tasks, such as identifying songs by using the mobile microphone. These are just a few examples of a new class of queries that are specific to mobile devices.

Q.   What are the most important things that marketers can do to optimize their content for Bing mobile search results?

Chu: For a marketer promoting a web destination, the best way is to use the webmaster tools on Bing.com. Many content developers submit a mobile URL through the webmaster tools, while others find it’s best to have their site detect what type of device is visiting [i.e., tablet, advanced smartphone, PC], and then redirect the end user to an optimized page. Both of these practices work well with Bing.

For marketers promoting a business with a local physical presence, two of the best basic SEO practices for businesses to follow are:

1. Ensure that you are listed in Bing Business Portal and that all business info is correct and always up-to-date
2. Provide superior service and encourage customers to give them good ratings and comments in popular review sites such as Yelp, Urbanspoon and City Search.

Thank you to Andy Chu and the Bing Mobile team for taking the time to talk to me about mobile search and SEO. Bing’s support of webmasters is well-known in the webmaster community, and nowhere is that support needed more than in the relatively nascent field of mobile search, where standards are young and the rules are still being written. It is appreciated.

And Google, whenever you’re ready to talk … we’re listening.

It’s a more “traditional,” email-based daily deal offering vs. the company’s earlier deal products and efforts (which are still ongoing). The new daily deals email capability is being powered by Tippr, another deals vendor that has found success with its white label platform.

Interestingly, in order to receive the Bing Deals emails, users must complete the sign-up process by logging in to a Windows Live or Facebook account. It’s not clear whether there’s any intended personalization behind the scenes — or whether deal purchases will be exposed through the Facebook news feed or Ticker.

The consumer pitch for Bing Deals is very much the same as that being made by scores of other deal providers: local business services at 50% to 90% off. And in respects this is a conventional offering — the earlier search-oriented Bing deals sites were more “progressive” — however there’s an interesting charitable angle that Microsoft hopes will build viral momentum.

Bing is offering what it’s calling Bing Deals for Schools, which allows schools or other non-profits to receive a piece of the money generated by local deal sales. In some sense this follows in the footsteps of “eScrip,” which is used in many places to raise additional funds for schools through ordinary purchases such as groceries.  Microsoft hopes that by connecting deal buying and school fundraising there will be more word of mouth and grassroots adoption of its program.  (There are other deals programs out there that provide a portion of sales to good causes; see, e.g., SharingSpree.)

The program has just started but appears to be available in 12 US cities so far. In this very early stage, the program’s track record is mixed (see below). In fairness, however, Bing Deals hasn’t yet been actively promoted.

There’s a question surrounding the source of these deals. Is Microsoft selling them directly to small merchants or is it sourcing them from a third party such as Tippr — or a bit of both? Tippr CEO Martin Tobias said he was unable to talk to me about specifics. It’s likely that Microsoft isn’t directly selling to small merchants but taking a deal feed from Tippr, just as it takes similar feeds for its other deal products.

I’ve made a similar request for additional information about the new program to Microsoft. If I get a statement or talk to someone I’ll update this post accordingly.

Postscript: Microsoft, through a spokesperson, said that this was not new and that daily deal emails were already available for each of the 12 markets in which Bing Deals operated. However I had not seen this previously.

Microsoft also said that “The vendor selling the deal may vary depending on the market and the deal and can include Microsoft via the Bing Business Portal, Tippr, or merchants via the Bing Business Portal.”

The mobile deals experience hasn’t really changed; you can see daily deals in  your selected area, as well as deals “nearby” and also browse deals by category. It’s available via the m.bing.com HTML5 site and Bing apps.

There’s a new more comprehensive online experience integrated into Bing Shopping on the PC however. It seeks to bring deals, coupons and retail sales data together in a single place. Users can search and browse for deals by product/brand, category and store.

Daily deals has largely been a “push” email marketing phenomenon and it’s now evolving into a broader experience where users can search and browse deals more proactively. Groupon Now and LivingSocial Instant, as well as several others, are making deals more “pull-oriented” or search-friendly — which is what Bing is also doing.

Yesterday Google relaunched Google Shopping, integrating some of the design elements of its soon-to-be closed Boutiques.com, with more content and features. Google’s daily deals product, Google Offers, is also integrated into the revamped shopping site. However the content is much more limited than what Bing is doing with deals.

Often forgotten, Yahoo has long offered deals and discounts as part of its experience, pre-dating both Google and Bing’s efforts.

Ask.com also sought to become the most comprehensive deals site online, in 2009. But this was before daily deals and deal mania really took off. The company’s timing was off and the effort largely failed. IAC sister company Citysearch has a mobile deals app and also aggregates deals online from various third party sources.

There are also a number of independent deal aggregators including Yipit, Local Offer Network and Savings.com among others.

We can probably expect that Google will ultimately do a version of what Bing is now doing, combining its own Offers with deal aggregation in Google Shopping and in mobile (and ultimately Google Places). This may be telegraphed by acquisition of deal aggregator The Dealmap (which Microsoft apparently was also interested in according to rumor).

Bing’s deals tab in Shopping is likely to be extremely popular as we head into the holiday shopping season. A bad economy and other factors suggest that many consumers will be looking for deals and discounts as an important part of their shopping consideration process.

Postscript: I was contacted by Microsoft to clarify that Bing continues to have a relationship with The Dealmap but has begun incorporating many more deal sources:

Bing Deals also include deals from deal sites such as Tippr, Groupon, Living Social, Zozi, Gilt City along with deals from over 2000 merchants through Bing Shopping including Target, Nordstrom, and Zappos to name a few.

Microsoft previously said that it isn’t going to try and map every street in every European capital. Rather it would concentrate on urban and more heavily trafficked areas — a kind of 80/20 bet. In following Google into Europe Microsoft also benefits from the former’s earlier missteps, negotiations and litigation in various European countries, paving the way (semi-literally and figuratively) for street-level imagery.

Bing Maps has decided to “bifurcate” its approach unfortunately. The richest Bing Maps experience requires the installation of Flash alternative Silverlight. That allows the 360-experience that users have become accustomed to with Google Maps. However in the absence of Silverlight users will see a kind of panorama of the street in question. (This approach has been in place for several months.)

While the panorama is visually interesting (and requires sophisticated technology on the back end) it’s not as useful or compelling as the richer Silverlight experience. Below, compare Bing Maps images of Westminster Abbey in London. The first offers the panorama from “Bing Maps Classic;” the second shows what’s possible with the Sliverlight version:

I’ve generally been a big fan of Bing Maps and its many innovations. In this instance, however, I don’t think that the “classic,” panoramic presentation delivers a great user experience. In the “classic” view Microsoft is making an effort to be consistent between mobile and PC user experiences.

Yet the presentation of the “seamless” panoramic imagery is not as helpful as the Silverlight version. By contrast, Google Maps doesn’t require a similar plug-in to deliver the more immersive experience:

I won’t get into the “politics of Sliverlight” and the battle with HTML5 but my advice would be to make the standard or “classic” experience on the PC richer without requiring the heavy software.

If I’m looking to get a sense of the neighborhood surrounding a potential hotel choice, for example, the panoramic view above doesn’t really give me enough visual information as a practical matter. In addition, I don’t think the panoramic imagery (by itself) will win any converts from Google Maps.

This is the expansion of a product enhancement that was first introduced last December.

It works both online and at m.bing.com, although I had some difficulty finding a mobile example this afternoon. Below is an example from the PC version of Bing Maps, a mall map for the San Francisco Centre:

Each store is listed together with contact details.

One can quickly imagine promotions or deals being overlaid on top of these maps. One can also imagine a richer “branded” experience, with logos, product inventory and images, interior photography and so on.

On a related note, Microsoft is working with Gigwalk in a deal that uses the latter’s crowd-based workforce to capture local business information and interior photography in eight metro markets: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami, and Seattle.

Accordingly there are some very interesting possibilities suggested by Bing venue maps. A number of other companies including Point Inside, Micello and Fast Mall are also creating interior and mall maps.

The “great indoors” is a kind of new frontier in LBS.

On any page within the Bing app (which is effectively a Safari browser alternative) users will be able to circle a word or phrase — hence the name “Lasso” –  and it will automatically search on that term or keyword in Bing. It’s not unlike a right-click search on the PC but on a tablet using your finger.

Users can return to the original story or content they were viewing in Bing with two swipes.

The Bing app for iPad should be available for download later today. As of this moment it’s not (1:20 Eastern). In general Bing for the iPad is a terrific application, which we discussed when it launched earlier this year.

Postscript: As Gary Price reminds me this is similar to Yahoo’s earlier “Sketch-a-Search” for the iPad, which was about designating a custom search area for restaurants on a map. And before that Ask offered similar custom map-based search on its now defunct Ask City product.

In most cases forecasting market size or growth is an art form rather than a science. Assumptions drive the metrics behind the models. But we typically don’t get to see the assumptions so clearly on display as we do in the recent IDC smartphone forecast (below).

Some Safe and Risky Assumptions

Across the board IDC predicts significant, continuing growth in the smartphone market. This is a very safe assumption. Further, Android is expected to continue to lead the market and increase its overall share. That’s another relatively safe assumption given current trends.

What’s interesting and controversial is the belief that by 2015 Windows Phones will overtake Apple’s iOS in terms of global market share.

Right now Windows Phone’s share is what you might call “de minimis.” The 3.8 percent figure in the chart above is mostly older Windows Mobile handsets in the market rather than sales of the new Windows Phone.

The general absence of Windows Phone sales figures in the market indicates that Microsoft doesn’t have a lot to trumpet. IDC competitor Gartner estimated that global Q1 sales for Windows Phones were a very modest 1.6 million units.

Will Nokia Provide the Needed Boost?

IDC’s forecast above, however, is driven by the expectation that Nokia will give the Windows OS a huge boost when the phones come out later this year or early next year:

Windows Phone 7/Windows Mobile will benefit from Nokia’s support, scope, and breadth within markets where Nokia has historically had a strong presence. Until Nokia begins introducing Windows Phone-powered smartphones in large volumes in 2012, Windows Phone 7/Windows Mobile will only capture a small share of the market as the release of Mango-powered smartphones are not expected to reach the market until late 2011. Nevertheless, assuming that Nokia’s transition to Windows Phone goes smoothly, the OS is expected to defend a number 2 rank and more than 20% share in 2015.

But Nokia’s ability to lift Windows Phone may be more compromised with each passing quarter. Nokia is a company in disarray and rapidly losing share. Nokia needs Windows as much as Microsoft needs Nokia. There are rumors circulating (and being vigorously denied by Nokia) that the company will be broken up and sold in pieces — or that Microsoft itself will buy the Nokia handset unit.

I’ve been using a Samsung Windows Phone from Microsoft and I’ve found a number of things that I like about it quite a bit about it. There are ways in which the UI and user experience are better and more polished than Android (which I’ve used for more than a year as my personal phone). There are some significant weaknesses or areas for improvement as well.

Survey Shows Developers Interested in Windows Phones

Currently there are relatively few apps (~10K) for the Windows Phone platform, which is a massive weakness vs. iOS and Android. However, in a recent global developer survey from VisionMobile, developer-respondents indicated that they are most interested Windows Phone after Android as the “next platform” they’ll write for.

The chart below indicates future mobile platform development plans among surveyed developers.

It’s not out of the question then that Microsoft and Nokia could become a “third mobile ecosystem” (after iOS, Andoid); however there are major hurdles to overcome before that can happen. The world of mobile devices is so dynamic and fluid that it’s very difficult to see more than a year or two out at the most.

The first “Nokisoft” phones are supposed to be out later this year. Consquently we should know by Q1 2012 (or Q2 at the latest) whether the Nokia relationship will significantly boost Windows Phone’s outlook — and whether IDC’s assumptions are well founded or totally off.

Windows Phone prototype image from Engadget.com. Used with permission.